Pa. sheds thousands more teachers in 2012

Sunday

Oct 7, 2012 at 12:01 AM

For the second year in a row, Pennsylvania has lost thousands of teaching jobs, and students have lost a multitude of programs and services, due to stagnant state and local revenues that are not keeping pace with rising pension obligations, according to a statewide survey.

STEVE ESACK

For the second year in a row, Pennsylvania has lost thousands of teaching jobs, and students have lost a multitude of programs and services, due to stagnant state and local revenues that are not keeping pace with rising pension obligations, according to a statewide survey.

The survey, conducted by the Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials and the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators, found 30 percent of respondent school districts cut 4,200 teaching positions through layoffs, attrition and vacancies left open in the 2012-13 school year.

That is on top of the 14,590 teaching jobs lost in 2011-12 after Gov. Tom Corbett and the Legislature reduced state education spending on public schools by $854 million, according to a similar survey the two organizations conducted last year.

In the last school year, Pocono school districts eliminated about 400 employees either through layoffs or attrition.

Closed were four school buildings: Chestnuthill Elementary in Pleasant Valley, Coolbaugh Elementary, Coolbaugh Learning Center and Swiftwater Intermediate School in Pocono Mountain.

Fewer teachers equal larger class sizes, and fewer electives and extracurricular activities for students in the 264 out of 500 school districts that responded to the new survey in August.

The survey found 51 percent of districts added more children to classrooms this school year than in the previous school year, when class sizes also were increased.

Students had fewer electives in 44 percent of school districts, and they had less tutoring in 35 percent of surveyed districts this school year.

Those results are nearly identical to electives and tutoring reductions that occurred in 2011-12, too.

State Education Department spokesman Tim Eller took exception to charges that funding is hurting schools.

"This is the typical rhetoric that these organizations have been spewing for more than a year, and quite frankly, they continue to misinform the public," Eller wrote in an email.

He said that if anyone is to blame for funding cuts it's President Obama.

"All fingers should point to the Obama administration and how its one-time stimulus program created the funding cliff that Gov. Corbett, as well as school districts across the state, faced during his first year in office," he wrote.

When Corbett entered office in 2011, he was facing a $4 billion deficit. He rolled back the basic education subsidy to 2008-09 levels, prior to an infusion of federal stimulus money, for the 2011-12 school year.

The Legislature restored some of Corbett's proposed cuts, resulting in a public education budget that was $854 million less than 2009-2010.

Public schools are mostly being funded at the same levels this year.

In addition, Corbett added money to cover the state's mandatory increase in its share of public school employees' retirement payments, which originated in the Legislature's 2001 decision to increase pensions for its members and all state employees.

The survey was released 10 days after the state Department of Education announced that statewide scores on the PSSA math and reading tests, which were administered in the spring, went down.

The decline occurred the same year education cuts went into effect and testing benchmarks for student proficiency rose.

State Education Secretary Ron Tomalis claimed the score declines happened solely because of his efforts to stop 100 teachers and principals from cheating at 110 schools.

Tomalis said a committee of statistical experts also told him budget cuts were not a factor in the statewide drop in scores.

But Tomalis "overstated" the committee's statistical analysis of scores, said Marianne Perie, senior associate of the Center for Assessment in Dover, N.H., and member of the Pennsylvania Technical Advisory Committee.

Jim Buckheit, executive director state Association of School Administrators, said the drop in test scores were caused by budget cuts, rising benchmarks and the cheating crackdown.

In light of those test results, he said, school districts are going to have to learn how to deal with less money because no one believes state education funding will increase significantly anytime soon.

School districts are going to have to rely more on technology because local property taxes alone will not be able to cover escalating costs, especially pension costs, he said.